Traditionally, wireless communication services have included voice cellular phone services and paging services in which a user can make a telephone call or send/receive a page including a numeric message indicating a telephone number over a wireless network. More recently, paging services have been expanded to offer alphanumeric paging, which allows a short text-based message to be sent to a handheld pager and displayed on such pager. Both cellular telephone and paging services, however, require an intended subscriber to be on-line or active to receive a telephone call or receive a transmitted paging message and such services do not typically offer the capability of storing the messages for a subscriber that is temporarily unavailable.
Due to the increasing popularity of digital wireless technology, the GSM (Global System for Mobile) communications protocol for digital wireless networks was introduced in Europe in the early 1990's, which included a messaging service known as SMS (Short Messaging Service). SMS is a wireless service that enables the transmission of alphanumeric messages between mobile subscribers and external systems such as electronic mail, paging and voice mail systems. SMS allows mobile phone users to write short text messages (e.g., up to 160 characters) using the phone keyboard and send such messages to other users for a relatively small service charge. Short message services are advantageous over text based paging services because of the capability of bi-directional communication. Such bi-directional communication allows, for example, notification to the originating device of the success or failure of the short message delivery.
Traditionally, the SMS service was available to mobile phones that use GSM communication, which is primarily available and popular in Europe and Asia. SMS is gaining popularity in the United States and is currently implemented using digital wireless/mobile networks, such as a PCS network based on the GSM standard, code division multiple access (CDMA) and/or time division multiple access (TDMA) methods.
The traditional input method for writing SMS messages is using a phone keyboard. There are various disadvantages associated with keyboard entry input. For instance, such input method is tedious and time consuming because the user has to make up to 3 to 4 keystrokes to type a single character. Consequently, a simple message such as “I'll be 20 mins late” can take 30 seconds to write. Some phone vendors somewhat alleviate this problem by providing a word auto-completion feature, such as the T9 feature Nokia phones. Other disadvantages of typing messages manually include having to use small keyboards that are provided with small mobile devices, which are cumbersome to use, as well as the concomitant careful viewing of a small screen required on the part of the user.
These disadvantages can be partially offset by conventional text templates that are provided with mobile phones. Although such templates might eliminate part of the typing task, there are also disadvantages associated with such text templates. For example, there is typically a limited amount of different templates that are provided with such devices and text templates typically cannot be added or edited. Furthermore, the use of text templates can be tedious and burdensome because the user has to manually navigate through a menu containing the templates and the user must manually type in the blanks. Another disadvantage with conventional text templates is that although a user can fill in the blanks, the user cannot edit the final message before sending such message.
There are other currently available messaging systems such as MMS (multi-media services) (for sending photos and other multi-media items) and mobile IM or IMS (instant messaging services), but such systems and services have not been as fully developed as SMS. Although there is a large market for carrier and service providers (operators) of services such as SMS, MMS, IM or IMS, for example, such services are mostly limited by costs and user interface (keypad entry). Therefore, it will be appreciated that a need exists in the prior art to address cost and user interface concerns so that messaging systems such as SMS, MMS and mobile IM can reach their full potential.